Having considered entering the artist's sumo wrestling teapot
Having considered entering the artist's sumo wrestling teapot…
The deadline for entries for the next Sculpture Without Walls program passed earlier this month.
Which means, yet again, my sumo wrestling teapot is hidden away from the masses.
I made it in a ceramics class in Washington State University in what seems like eons ago. Upon enrolling in the course I'd vowed to myself I was not leaving without a sumo wrestler of some sort.
My fascination with sumo wrestlers harks back to the days of the "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles," when Mom and Dad gave me an action figure of sumo wrestler Tattoo. It was so cool. One could put little fake tattoo stickers on the toy, and on oneself. If my teapot looks like anything, it's a crude version of the action figure. I guess some things you never get over.
So I waited throughout the semester for my moment of opportunity, suffering as kneading the clay worked muscles I didn't even know I had and my instructor continually peppered her instructions with the phrase "or what have you." If I'd have had a dollar for every time she said "or what have you," I could have paid for the ceramics textbook, if there was one. But there wasn't. And I didn't.
Then came the day we were assigned to design our own teapot. And the gods of creativity saw fit to strike. One arm could be the spout! The other, the handle! The belly of the wrestler could be, conceivably, where the water would go. The mouth of the wrestler could be the (Let's see, hmm hmm hmm teapot, short and stout, hmm hmm hmm handle, hmm hmm hmm spout … Curses! No more teapot body part knowledge with which to impress people) place where water/tea comes out. The hair could be the "lid."
I lucked out and found a glaze which, in liquid form, didn't look like much but came out a really cool metallic red-brown hue. The glaze was in a jar which had been neglected by my classmates, but they paid for their neglect with jealousy: "Where did you get that color?!?!"
I was so proud of the teapot, I dragged friends from all over the campus to come and see it while I waited for a grade.
When the semester was over, the teapot was the piece I made sure to protect the best and take with me, while other creations from the class, including a weird giant eyeball on a column, a pouting Venus flytrap and a replica of my then-neon yellow shoes found their way to Mom's house, where she continually asks, "Why do I have to have this stuff taking up space?"
I fake-cry to save those masterpieces until my next visit, when we repeat the cycle all over again.
But, truth be told, I'd probably be too afraid of rejection to ever consider turning my teapot in, anyway.
And It doesn't exactly fit the requirements of being suitable for the outdoors.
Nor is it actually very good. You know, in artistic circles. Or in circles of people with so-called "taste."
Plus I've never tried to actually put tea in it. It has a bellybutton, intentionally placed, so it won't hold water.
Doesn't stop me from being proud of it, though.
In fact, in my eyes, the lumps make it all the more lovable.
Matthew Weaver is the artistically inclined business and agriculture reporter for the Columbia Basin Herald. His work was also on display in the form of a chalk rabbit during the recent Memorial Day Weekend Chalk on the Block event outside the Moses Lake Museum and Art Center.
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